"I think it's a fallacy that it hasn't. Everyone quotes World of Warcraft as being the obvious one, but there's a massively thriving community of hardcore gamers on the PC still. The way they get their games is different where it's nearly all online delivery, so you've got the likes of Paradox, who do a variety of niche content but it's all massively hardcore and serves that audience. You've got the World of Tanks guys who have something like a million concurrent users or something stupid like that. That is not a platform that is in trouble. It's just different, it's changed," says Epic's Mike Gamble. "It happens every so often, we've been having the same talks since Windows 95. It goes up and down, the consoles are here and the PC is in the trough, then the PCs are here and consoles are down there. That's how the performance works, just the fact that deliver has changed on PC, that it's not trackable as it once was, it's not the retail, it doesn't mean it's gone."

Mead wrote on Aug 4, 2011, 11:42:I couldn't tell you which games Epic produced, and I don't give a shit. The game is either entertaining on its own and worth the cost, or it isn't. The key to not getting screwed out of your money isn't nerdraging after blindly throwing it at something, but paying attention and making sure you're spending it on something worthy.

And part of that finding "something worthy" equation means looking at the company that is doing the game and what history they have. If they've put out a bunch of crappy games, there's a lower chance that their next one will be good. Or if they've put out a bunch of great quality games, there's a better chance their next one will be good. There's also support questions, does the company have a history of supporting and patching the game, or do they drop it like a hot potato next year when the sequel comes out.

Those are all factors in the equation, just like the reviews and metacritic scores are factors. There's other factors as well, and the mix of factors can differ person to person. A lot of people just want eye candy and a shooter for instance, and could care less about every other factor.